At least person was killed and several more injured in shelling on the central Damascus Ummayad Square on Monday morning, Syrian state media reported.

State television said one person had been killed and others wounded, while official news agency SANA said "initial information suggests six citizens were wounded by terrorist shelling... on Ummayad Square."

Sixty years after the first successful polio vaccine trial, the disease has been wiped out in much of the world, but violence, conspiracy theories and lack of cash keep it from disappearing.

"The world is closer than ever to eradicating polio," said Oliver Rosenbauer, spokesman for the World Health Organization's Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

Afghanistan on Monday took full control of Bagram military prison from the United States, healing one running sore in their testy relationship as U.S.-led forces wind down more than a decade of war.

President Hamid Karzai had made the fate of the detention center north of Kabul part of his ill-tempered push to regain sovereignty over key matters from the Americans, ahead of next year's pullout of foreign combat troops.

International students studying in New Zealand, where prostitution is legal, have been told they are to be barred from working in the sex trade.

A government immigration website, www.nzstudywork.com, said Monday overseas students have the same workplace rights as all New Zealanders, but lists jobs they cannot do.

Syria's fractious opposition, further weakened by the shock weekend resignation of its leader, must reunite to prevent extremists from taking over, the French foreign minister said Monday.

Laurent Fabius also told Europe 1 radio that he was aware of a rumor that President Bashar Assad had been assassinated by an Iranian bodyguard but said that the information published on a website "has not been confirmed."

Riad al-Asaad, commander of the rebel Free Syrian Army, was wounded overnight in a blast that hit his car in eastern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog said on Monday.

A government official in Ankara confirmed Asaad had been hurt, saying he had lost a leg in the attack but that he was in "good condition" after being rushed across the Syrian border into Turkey for treatment.

Hong Kong's top court on Monday threw out a landmark case that would have given hundreds of thousands of foreign maids the right to seek permanent residency, ending a legal battle that split the city.

In rejecting the bid to give maids the same residency rights as other foreigners, the Court of Final Appeal ruled that there was no need to refer the case to Beijing for a final say, which would have sparked new controversy.

On a market stall in the Malian capital, stickers of Lionel Messi, Madonna and Osama bin Laden fight for space with the far more popular image of Francois Hollande, the French President.

Other stalls offer tricolors and T-shirts bearing pro-French slogans as Mali, bursting with gratitude over France's intervention to drive Islamists out of its northern cities, celebrates its former colonial ruler like never before.

It is perhaps not surprising that there are only a handful of humans on one of the most remote islands on Earth, coral atolls far out in the turquoise seas of the Indian Ocean.

What is unexpected are the 100,000 giant tortoises - more than are found on the world famous Galapagos Islands - with some weighing a staggering 250 kilogrammes (550 pounds) and with shells more that a metre (yard) across.

Former Sex Pistols front man John Lydon told his Chinese fans to "be perverse" Monday ahead of highly-anticipated concerts in China with his band Public Image Ltd.

Lydon, better known as Johnny Rotten from his days as lead singer of the British punk band in the 1970s, said he would take time out from his gigs in Beijing and Shanghai this weekend to talk to Chinese fans.